Labour activists are pushing the party's national executive to support local parties that would like to punish MPs who have broken the spirit of expenses rules as well as the actual rules.

As the party struggles to respond to a surge of anger from activists, councillors and candidates, representatives of Labour's 33-strong ruling body were ­yesterday sifting through hundreds of suggestions emailed by grassroots members, including a majority urging the national executive committee (NEC) to allow constituency parties to vote to push their MP through a reselection process, going further than the prime minister himself has suggested.

Separately a group of more than 100 Labour activists have also gone so far as to say the prime minister has been ­"negligent" in his handling of widescale evidence of expenses wrongdoing.

The prime minister is thought to oppose a grassroots proposal from leftwing NEC members to compel all sitting Labour MPs to go through selection before they are allowed to fight the next election. Instead the party's administrative body is more likely to go for the automatic deselection of any MP found to have submitted improper expense claims, who will then be blocked from standing again.

However, activists are pressurising the NEC, which meets today, to go ­further because any deselection would only happen after the parliamentary commissioner for standards has ruled that an MP had been found clearly guilty of improperly claiming.

It is expected the commissioner, who reports to the standards and privileges committee, will conclude that very few MPs knowingly breached the existing rules.

Instead Labour activists want their NEC representatives to allow party members to trigger a deselection process independent of whether the parliamentary commissioner finds an MP in the wrong. This is traditionally fairly difficult to do so activists want the NEC to make some sort of declaration that would support constituency Labour parties that wish to take action.

This might see MPs punished who have been found to have "flipped" the home designated as their second residence – ­hitherto allowed by parliament's rules. Should the NEC move to support this, ministers such as the communities secretary, Hazel Blears, would be ­vulnerable. It might also see MPs who have claimed for the likes of plasma televisions challenged.

One NEC member acknowledged the pressure from grassroots members, and the ill-defined nature of the wrong they are expected to legislate against. He said: "Our task is to draw up some independent mechanism which allows constituency parties to rule that an 88p bath plug doesn't trigger reselection but a tin of cat food does. These rules can't be implemented from the top down from the party high command, but it has to come from the bottom."

Uppermost in the minds of NEC ­representatives is that any new set of rules would be subject to significant legal challenge with any MP arguing their claims had been accepted by the fees office.

There is also a fear that the Labour party cannot afford a wide round of reselection.

In recognition of the challenge facing the NEC, one suggestion gaining credence is that all constituency parties be allowed to review their MPs' conduct at their June monthly meeting.

The most vocal push for a widening of the scope of punishment for MPs came from a group of nearly 100 Labour councillors, parliamentary candidates and activists who wrote urging the party to act independently of the commissioner and to organise a review of those "suspected" of wrongdoing.

In their letter the group also described the prime minister as "negligent" in his response so far to the unfolding revelations about the allowance system. They call on the NEC to organise a thorough review of suspected excessive and abusive claims "regardless of whether they were eventually signed off by an overworked fees office".

It also called for the party whip to be removed from individual MPs who have brought the party into disrepute.